The Race for Technology

Submitted by Ndembou Jean-Louis on November 19, 2017

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‘Eureka!!!’ I shouted, as laughter bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, infecting the laboratory with my mirth. My three research assistants simultaneously let out whoopees as they hopped on the spot, pumping fists in the air. ‘Ahem! Ahem!’ someone tactfully but obtrusively cleared their throat. We all turned to the sound. Framed within the door was an unobtrusive light-skinned man, probably in his mid-fifties, with the grey sprinkled parsimoniously through his thinning black hair. ‘It could be quite a befitting expression should the circumstances be right Dr Dinga.’ he said pensively. ‘Concerning the issue of feasibility, there are only two possibilities: yes or no. Remember that even I have limits to how much I can influence the allocation of resources and time.’ He made the statement in a seemingly offhanded manner, while walking briskly to contemplate the reason of our jubilation. The Wistar rat we had experimented on lay on its side on a wooden board, recovering from anaesthesia. It was connected to several wires and tubes, enabling the monitoring of vital signs and other physiological parameters. The data collected and processed by the CPU was projected as virtual 3D images. The liver we had just transplanted was portrayed as being perfectly anatomically configured to the least atom. The physiological panel also showed that its metabolic activities had resumed normally.
We had worked hard to bypass the complications inherent to teleportation systems which were perilous when used within living systems. Though powerful, the existing computers could not provide accurate estimates for the delicate calculations required. Most had abandoned the idea completely to rely on the more convenient and proven methods provided by nanotechnology in transplantation surgery. Most of my colleagues had even relegated my efforts to the domain of quixotism. After twelve years I remained undaunted. Moreover, our most recent trials with what I’d dubbed the ‘biotransposer’ had been largely satisfying. We had not been able to rid ourselves completely of nanotechnology so we compromised with a hybrid system. We had combined miniaturised terminals with nanobots acting as fine tuning calculators and sinks as well as performing other tasks requiring surgical nano-accuracy. The hitch so far was the minor but not inconsequential coagulation caused by the procedure. There was nothing more destructive than the insidious energy conversions occurring during the procedure. They had proven even more critical than the intrinsic risks of flawed alignment during materialization. At least on ethical grounds we had won all arguments which had mostly boiled down to technical issues surrounding cloning technologies, though organs only were involved. The other bone of contention left to wrangle was the angle of cost effectiveness.
Pr Nkeng Elame was my staunchest supporter and a bigwig in quantum medicine. His help had been inestimable in all aspects of my endeavour. That he made such a statement proved that he was getting to the end of his tether as far as our grant mechanisms were concerned. ‘The answer is yes professor. We need just a few adjustments and I can assure you that in about 6 months we can safely transplant organs by teleportation.’ I replied soberly. ‘I wouldn’t hold you strictly to your statement Dinga,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I did put the restraints to your answer after all. However, I would like you to remember that in our field the possibilities are infinite.’ he continued while turning to the door. ‘Dr Melo, come in and share your findings.’ ‘Pr, we are not saying that my esteemed colleague’s recent findings are obsolete but…’ Dr Melo was the professor’s other protégé, so far I’d only heard about him. He breezed in and stood close to the professor, gesticulating animatedly as he spoke. He was a powerfully built bespectacled fellow. ‘Melo, to the point.’ the professor said with an impatient sigh. ‘Yes. The problem of directionality was solved about a century ago but the restrictions on living bodies left many in disillusionment as things and not people could safely travel through time. We were not trying to solve the problem, but our goals were overtaken by serendipity...’ ‘Melo!’ the professor interrupted, looking at him significantly. ‘Sure, prof. In our calculations, while trying to bend the rules which imperil living matter travelling through time, we managed to move out of time.’ he said, virtually hoping from one foot to the other in excitement.
‘Dinga shut your mouth before someone thinks of storing a pineapple there.’ the professor said, his eyes twinkling with joviality. I’d certainly gotten the drift of Melo’s statement. In his exuberance Melo did not stop there, ‘Can you imagine the implications?’ Sure, I’d already gotten there and was back. What he was saying was that now we could engineer immortal organs. ‘But that’s preposterous!’ I blurted out, feeling suddenly unhappy as I thought of how he had supplanted me at my finest hour. ‘I thought the same initially when I viewed the first extrapolations from the time dilator.’ he replied evenly. ‘Even if that warping machine you call a dilator could achieve such fine estimates how would the space-time bubble created escape the vector-like qualities of time? I’d have thought just maintaining an organ on its course to the future would suffice.’ I interjected. ‘Should your postulate be realisable it would still remain impractical.’ he replied without missing a beat. ‘Whatever the case, I reluctantly admit that so far I lack a suitable hypothesis for this phenomenon. I really can’t explain how we escaped the space-time continuum. Like I said, it is more of a discovery than an invention. Don’t even ask me what dimension we would be dealing with or why it is visible or why mass is restricted.’ he said with finality. Now it was my turn to ask him the famous question the professor had plagued me with, though not on matters of feasibility. As usual the professor seemed to have anticipated my reaction as his lips curved with a knowing smile. ‘So, Dr Melo, concerning the issue of ethics...’

Quantum Theory: A to Z

At extremely low temperatures, quantum rules mean that atoms can come together and behave as if they are one giant super-atom.

U is for ... Universe

To many researchers, the universe behaves like a gigantic quantum computer that is busy processing all the information it contains.

C is for ... Computing

The rules of the quantum world mean that we can process information much faster than is possible using the computers we use now.

O is for ... Objective reality

Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, said there is no such thing as objective reality. All we can talk about, he said, is the results of measurements we make.

W is for ... Wave-particle duality

It is possible to describe an atom, an electron, or a photon as either a wave or a particle. In reality, they are both: a wave and a particle.

T is for ... Tunnelling

This happens when quantum objects “borrow” energy in order to bypass an obstacle such as a gap in an electrical circuit. It is possible thanks to the uncertainty principle, and enables quantum particles to do things other particles can’t.

D is for ... Decoherence

Unless it is carefully isolated, a quantum system will “leak” information into its surroundings. This can destroy delicate states such as superposition and entanglement.

R is for ... Randomness

Unpredictability lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. It bothered Einstein, but it also bothers the Dalai Lama.

S is for ... Schrödinger’s Cat

A hypothetical experiment in which a cat kept in a closed box can be alive and dead at the same time – as long as nobody lifts the lid to take a look.

A is for ... Atom

This is the basic building block of matter that creates the world of chemical elements – although it is made up of more fundamental particles.

K is for ... Kaon

These are particles that carry a quantum property called strangeness. Some fundamental particles have the property known as charm!

V is for ... Virtual particles

Quantum theory’s uncertainty principle says that since not even empty space can have zero energy, the universe is fizzing with particle-antiparticle pairs that pop in and out of existence. These “virtual” particles are the source of Hawking radiation.

I is for ... Interferometer

Some of the strangest characteristics of quantum theory can be demonstrated by firing a photon into an interferometer: the device’s output is a pattern that can only be explained by the photon passing simultaneously through two widely-separated slits.

C is for ... Cryptography

People have been hiding information in messages for millennia, but the quantum world provides a whole new way to do it.

L is for ... Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

At CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, this machine is smashing apart particles in order to discover their constituent parts and the quantum laws that govern their behaviour.

B is for ... Bell's Theorem

In 1964, John Bell came up with a way of testing whether quantum theory was a true reflection of reality. In 1982, the results came in – and the world has never been the same since!

H is for ... Hawking Radiation

In 1975, Stephen Hawking showed that the principles of quantum mechanics would mean that a black hole emits a slow stream of particles and would eventually evaporate.

Q is for ... Quantum biology

A new and growing field that explores whether many biological processes depend on uniquely quantum processes to work. Under particular scrutiny at the moment are photosynthesis, smell and the navigation of migratory birds.

X is for ... X-ray

In 1923 Arthur Compton shone X-rays onto a block of graphite and found that they bounced off with their energy reduced exactly as would be expected if they were composed of particles colliding with electrons in the graphite. This was the first indication of radiation’s particle-like nature.

P is for ... Planck's Constant

This is one of the universal constants of nature, and relates the energy of a single quantum of radiation to its frequency. It is central to quantum theory and appears in many important formulae, including the Schrödinger Equation.

G is for ... Gluon

These elementary particles hold together the quarks that lie at the heart of matter.

P is for ... Probability

Quantum mechanics is a probabilistic theory: it does not give definite answers, but only the probability that an experiment will come up with a particular answer. This was the source of Einstein’s objection that God “does not play dice” with the universe.

H is for ... Hidden Variables

One school of thought says that the strangeness of quantum theory can be put down to a lack of information; if we could find the “hidden variables” the mysteries would all go away.

S is for ... Superposition

Quantum objects can exist in two or more states at once: an electron in superposition, for example, can simultaneously move clockwise and anticlockwise around a ring-shaped conductor.

I is for ... Information

Many researchers working in quantum theory believe that information is the most fundamental building block of reality.

Y is for ... Young's Double Slit Experiment

In 1801, Thomas Young proved light was a wave, and overthrew Newton’s idea that light was a “corpuscle”.

S is for ... Schrödinger Equation

This is the central equation of quantum theory, and describes how any quantum system will behave, and how its observable qualities are likely to manifest in an experiment.

J is for ... Josephson Junction

This is a narrow constriction in a ring of superconductor. Current can only move around the ring because of quantum laws; the apparatus provides a neat way to investigate the properties of quantum mechanics.

N is for ... Nonlocality

When two quantum particles are entangled, it can also be said they are “nonlocal”: their physical proximity does not affect the way their quantum states are linked.

Q is for ... Qubit

One quantum bit of information is known as a qubit (pronounced Q-bit). The ability of quantum particles to exist in many different states at once means a single quantum object can represent multiple qubits at once, opening up the possibility of extremely fast information processing.

U is for ... Uncertainty Principle

One of the most famous ideas in science, this declares that it is impossible to know all the physical attributes of a quantum particle or system simultaneously.

R is for ... Reality

Since the predictions of quantum theory have been right in every experiment ever done, many researchers think it is the best guide we have to the nature of reality. Unfortunately, that still leaves room for plenty of ideas about what reality really is!

G is for ... Gravity

Our best theory of gravity no longer belongs to Isaac Newton. It’s Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. There’s just one problem: it is incompatible with quantum theory. The effort to tie the two together provides the greatest challenge to physics in the 21st century.

W is for ... Wavefunction

The mathematics of quantum theory associates each quantum object with a wavefunction that appears in the Schrödinger equation and gives the probability of finding it in any given state.

M is for ... Many Worlds Theory

Some researchers think the best way to explain the strange characteristics of the quantum world is to allow that each quantum event creates a new universe.

A is for ... Act of observation

Some people believe this changes everything in the quantum world, even bringing things into existence.

Z is for ... Zero-point energy

Even at absolute zero, the lowest temperature possible, nothing has zero energy. In these conditions, particles and fields are in their lowest energy state, with an energy proportional to Planck’s constant.

F is for ... Free Will

Ideas at the heart of quantum theory, to do with randomness and the character of the molecules that make up the physical matter of our brains, lead some researchers to suggest humans can’t have free will.

D is for ... Dice

Albert Einstein decided quantum theory couldn’t be right because its reliance on probability means everything is a result of chance. “God doesn’t play dice with the world,” he said.

E is for ... Entanglement

When two quantum objects interact, the information they contain becomes shared. This can result in a kind of link between them, where an action performed on one will affect the outcome of an action performed on the other. This “entanglement” applies even if the two particles are half a universe apart.

A is for ... Alice and Bob

In quantum experiments, these are the names traditionally given to the people transmitting and receiving information. In quantum cryptography, an eavesdropper called Eve tries to intercept the information.

L is for ... Light

We used to believe light was a wave, then we discovered it had the properties of a particle that we call a photon. Now we know it, like all elementary quantum objects, is both a wave and a particle!

T is for ... Teleportation

Quantum tricks allow a particle to be transported from one location to another without passing through the intervening space – or that’s how it appears. The reality is that the process is more like faxing, where the information held by one particle is written onto a distant particle.

M is for ... Multiverse

Our most successful theories of cosmology suggest that our universe is one of many universes that bubble off from one another. It’s not clear whether it will ever be possible to detect these other universes.

R is for ... Radioactivity

The atoms of a radioactive substance break apart, emitting particles. It is impossible to predict when the next particle will be emitted as it happens at random. All we can do is give the probability that any particular atom will have decayed by a given time.